A friend asked how he could make money from his blog. With the caveat that I don’t make money directly from my blog, or try to (more about that later), I have some advice to share. Bloggers can pursue multiple options to generate revenue:

Sell ads

One way is to sell ads yourself. This requires time and skill that many bloggers don’t have. You would need to figure out what to charge for ads, identify potential advertisers, make the pitch, service the account and bill the customer (or arrange for handling credit cards). Journalists who blog might also feel that selling ads would present ethical challenges, either for the blog itself or with their day jobs.

However, the advantage of selling ads yourself is that you can target specific advertisers interested in the niche audience of your blog, which might bring you a higher ad rate if you are selling ads based on how many thousand impressions you serve (a rate called CPM, short for cost per mille, or thousand). You also could seek to sell sponsorships at a flat rate. (more…)